NOT a fishy tale!

This week The Legal Genealogist is highlighting some of the image collections that are available to us as genealogists to use in our own work.

Photographs and illustrations that are free, or mostly free, of copyright restrictions, that we can freely use, can add a lot to our family histories and, fortunately for us in this 21st century, there’s quite a bit available to use.

And one of the reasons why there’s so much available for us to use is one section of the U.S. copyright law: a section that says that “(c)opyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government…”1

What that means, in plain English, is that any image (or map or drawing) created by a federal government employee in the course of his or her official duties for the federal government is free of copyright restrictions. We can use those images and maps and drawings freely to illustrate our own family histories.

And there are — and have been — so many government employees creating images and maps and drawings, with the result that there is so much out there to choose from.

One example — just one: an agency most of us, I suspect, wouldn’t think of as a source, but which is rich in offerings.

Funny you should mention the CCC! Just discovered my father in laws service in the CCC while trying to prove he was a veteran. I had never heard of it before, and it is sooooooooooo interesting, I got sidetracked learning about it!